Brown-Forman is planning to invest an additional $20m to restore its Old Forester bourbon brand.
Last year, the company had allocated $30m to establish a new distillery in Louisville, Kentucky, to produce Old Forester, which sold only 112,000 cases in 2014, down from its 1972 peak of one million cases, reported The Wall Street Journal.
According to tracking service GuestMetrics, Old Forester sales at restaurants and bars across the US increased 40% during last year, and are already up by 40% this year.
Brown-Forman chief brands and strategy officer Lawson Whiting was quoted by the WSJ as saying: "Our goal for the brand is to bring [Old Forester] back to global prominence.
"We want to get back over 500,000 cases pretty fast."
Specifically, the money is expected to be used to enhance the brand's 'retro appeal,' on point-of-sale materials at retail, promotions at bars and for digital marketing.
Initially marketed as 'America's Guest Whiskey,' Old Forester's sales collapsed in the late 1970s as Americans' preferences shifted from whiskey to vodka and wine
Campbell Brown, who was recently appointed as president of the unit, noted that the company will have to increase sales outside Kentucky and Alabama, which accounted for almost half of Old Forester volume in 2014.
The company will target people in their twenties in urban markets such as New York, Chicago and San Francisco where bartenders increasingly use bourbon for cocktails such as the Old Fashioned, Brown added.
Old Forester is a sibling of Jack Daniel's.